Voice-mail hacking and Police-bribery ... these are the two scandals for which Mr. Murdoch shut down the 168-year-old News of the World (NOTW) and gave a public apology in an effort to placate the British regulators. He had allegedly hacked the phone messages of the 13-year-old kidnap and murder victim Milly Dowler, those of families of 9/11 victims, British soldiers killed in Afghanistan and may be even that of the British Royal family.
Rupert Murdoch's billion dollar media empire's holdings include several TV channels including Fox TV, Star TV, film studio 20th Century Fox, publishing giant HarperCollins, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. A native Australian now a US citizen, it is ironical that he owns 40% of the British media and he does not even live there!
What made him do this? I couldn't help comparing Rupert Murdoch with Edward Armstead of 1982 best seller ‘The Almighty’. Murdoch had one thing in common with the Irving Wallace character ... the ruling obsession to head a vast news empire. Armstead manipulated, controlled and eventually created news, whereas Murdoch hunted for information by tapping phones and bribing cops.
Bribing cops in India is such an accepted practice that it is laughable when done for only collecting information. Out here, we bribe cops for far graver crimes like destruction of evidence (Aarushi’s case), tampering of witnesses (Jessica’s case), protecting high profile individuals (Rouvanjit suicide case) etc. Ironically there are several instances where cops themselves perpetuate the crime (Rathore-Ruchika case). Many of these cases have not seen the light of the day.
Back in India, phone are being regularly tapped including those of high level people like Finance Minister. Sometime back, we had a similar scandal involving Nira Radia tapes in connection with the 2G spectrum scam which almost collapsed the government and lead to several interesting arrests.
I am not sure whether bribing cops and phone hacking scams even interest the common working class people. If there is one thing I learnt from this episode , it is this
Phone hacking refers to unauthorized accessing of unprotected Voice Mail or Voice Mail with very weak PIN
Phone tapping refers to listening to live telephonic / internet conversations by a third party often by covert means)
Well ....this is the murky Fourth Estate....No wonder people moved to the Fifth Estate - Social Media with Facebook, Twitter et al ....Original People Power! Old Monk
ReplyDeleteDear VJ, you are right. Murdoch wants to be the Almighty. The recent setback may hurt him some but he has such a big empire and clout that I doubt he would be deterred. Its for governments to make sure that such scandals don't happen.Keep posting.-PKP.
ReplyDeleteHi, there is more to the whole episode than what meets the eye. If one tries to understand the need to pry into other people's personal lives , its mostly due to a perverted sense of sadism.And the people who exploit the situation of hapless victims are worse than blood sucking vampires. They are soul sucking parasites who thrive on the vulnerability of the hapless victims. So whats the best possible punishment for the beyond the level of punishment of these soul sucking parasites??
ReplyDeletePhone hacking and bribing the cops doesn't interest anyone here in India... its become so common phenomenon here....
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